Self-portrait

In 1667 Baciccio was about 28, a Genoese painter making his name in Rome, where the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini had taken him under his wing. Here he shows himself the way an ambitious young artist wanted to be seen, in a gold jacket and a soft velvet cap, half turned toward us with an easy confidence. He worked on it across 1667 and 1668, and it later joined the Uffizi's gallery of artists' self-portraits, where painters were asked to hand down their own faces to posterity. Notice how much care goes into the fabric, the sheen of the jacket and the nap of the cap, from a man who would soon fill Roman ceilings with figures tumbling through golden light.